It is not often that a jovial call from an old friend in the African night brings back chilling memories of brutality that could have shamed the devil. It came from Washington; from fellow journalist Ray Choto – a man who was prepared to die, at the hands of his own people in his own land, to protect his sources. The kind of journalist everyone should want to be.
The unexpected call sent my mind racing back to January 1999 and nine days of sun and torrential rain that dripped with dark deeds.
Choto and Mark Chavunduka wrote a story for their newspaper, the Sunday Standard in Harare, claiming that there had been a coup attempt. Senior military sources told them that 23 soldiers, including seven officers, were under lock and key.
The government was enraged but, instead of refuting it, or writing a lawyer’s letter to the Standard, sent soldiers to clap Choto and Chavunduka in handcuffs and leg irons. They were kept for what Choto called “nine days of hell”.  Soldiers stripped them, blindfolded them, beat them with planks, kicked them in the kidneys and shoved their heads in drums of water.
For days we pumped out the story, day and night from Harare and pestered the authorities. What makes me sick to my stomach is that everyone in power knew where the two were, but no one had to guts to leak it. It sticks in my craw even more that if the journalists had been from the United States or Europe the story would have been at the top of world news and the battered young men would have been out before the sun went down.
Instead it was more than a week before we set eyes on Choto and Chavunduka; even then they were still in custody in the Magistrates’ Court. They were charged with an old colonial law, the Law and Order Maintenance Act, and released on bail. I can still see Chavunduka smiling as he saw me striding into the court on that sunlit day.
“Chris, what’s happening?”
“I thought you were going to tell us,” I laughed. A few minutes later the two shared another relieved smile as I waved them off in their car on their way to the Sunday Standard.
What did happen on those violent nights was no laughing matter. Back in his newsroom, Choto told, gesturing with his painful and swollen hands, how his torturers pushed live electric wires into his testicles. He was in so much pain he snapped the chain of his handcuffs.
The torturers were worried, at the end of their work, as the blood poured down the faces of the two young journalists; they feared Aids, Choto said. It had been raining heavily outside, so the torturers kicked their two young countrymen, naked, down a grassy bank to wipe off the blood.
To cap it all, the Supreme Court threw out the case against the two on constitutional grounds. A letter to the editor would have saved everyone pain, shame, money and trouble. The journalists believed their ordeal was a warning to the independent press.
Choto flew to London for psychological and physical repair. He took a fellowship at Stanford University, California, before joining the Voice of America in Washington. In 2002, he went home to visit his family where a military source told him to get out fast; his family agreed. He hasn’t set foot in Zimbabwe for more than 15 years and missed his mother’s funeral in May 2010; a thorn in his heart, he says.
Chavunduka died young in 2002; friends agree his ordeal hastened his demise.
When I spoke to Choto on that night call, we chuckled through our reminiscing. We talked of  hardship and lost friends, in the robust way journalists do, that’s how we live with the pain.
For me, I will always think of the smiling Choto and Chavunduka, bathed in that summer light, as they drove from court with broken bodies and many nightmares to come. How many journalists pay this high price for principle? I wonder why Africa breaks its youngest and brightest on the wheel.

Torture That Could Have Shamed The Devil

As rugby ponders its future in Africa, the game is catching on in the city that never sleeps and doesn’t know an All Black from a Springbok.
In April, the new and rich PRO Rugby league was launched in New York. It has four South African players among its five teams.
Pedrie Wannenburg, a former Springboks and Blue Bulls loose forward, captains Denver and plays alongside compatriots Armandt Peens, Martin Knoetze and Niku Kruger. The four helped Denver to lead the league with six games unbeaten. Former Nelson Mandela University scrumhalf Charlie Purdon is a star player for San Diego.
Another three South Africans are among the coaching staff for the teams. South Africans make up the majority of the 15 foreign players and coaches contracted to PRO Rugby. Wannenburg, who is the most senior of the players, and one who was capped 20 times by the Springboks, earns $70,000 a year at Denver. The lowest paid player in the league gets $20,000.
PRO Rugby is the brainchild of New York investor Doug Schoninger, who owns Stadium Capital Financing Group. He is counting on the influence of foreign players to grow the sport, which is little known in the United States.
“We needed the help of foreign players, they really play a great service. We have the All Black fullback Mils Muliaina and Springbok loose forward Pedrie Wannenburg as captains. They serve such a great mentorship purpose in their teams. We have this Italian guy, Mirco Bergamasco, he is a mentor and captain for Sacramento. Their culture of rugby is better than ours and they are giving that to our players,” he said.
Schoninger, like many Americans, knew little about rugby, in 2014, when he failed to buy a minor league baseball team. Through an Australian friend, Schoninger was diverted to another investor who had struggle to bring rugby to the United States for nine years. Schoninger didn’t agree with the terms of the potential partner, who wanted to compete with the National Football League (NFL).
Instead Schoninger started alone and small; PRO Rugby was approved by USA Rugby in April 2015.
Schoninger says rugby may be small, compared to baseball and basketball, but has great potential.
“Most people don’t even know what rugby is – they know the name – there could be only two million people who know rugby in America. That’s what gets potential sponsors excited. It’s a new white sheet of paper in America. It’s not rugby in England or South Africa or Australia. Our rules are slightly different; our presentation is different. Arguably, there’s no other sport with this kind of opportunity in America, that’s well known, that has the World Cup every four years, that’s not here. That’s what I saw when I was talking to my Australian friend.”
USA Rugby, the sport’s national body, said the sport was the fastest growing team sport in the United States between 2008 and 2013. The game has increased it draw for spectators. In 2014, the All Blacks and USA Eagles played in Chicago before 61,500 in a packed Soldier Field stadium.
Schoninger said the league has not received any major sponsors, nor contracted broadcasting deals, but he was prepared to run alone for three seasons. He was hopeful that investors will soon come on board as the sport’s popularity grows.
The plan is to increase the five foreign players’ quota, per team, to seven in 2017. It means a another handful of South Africans, like 26-year-old Purdon, will line up for hard currency and softer tackles in the city that could be waking up to rugby.

Rugby In New York? Nice Try

Japan’s surprise last-minute defeat of the Springboks in the Rugby World Cup last year was glorious. South Africans were a bit put out but soon recovered, and that game is now legendary around the world for Japan’s courage, skill and daring.
In Japan, only 900,000 people watched the game live. That jumped to an astonishing 25 million for the team’s next match, and by the end of their pool games, a quarter of the country’s 126-million population had watched a game.
Now the island country prepares for a sterner test: hosting the World Cup in 2019.
“You ask what are my concerns?” the CEO of Japan Rugby 2019, Akira Shimazu responds over a cup of hot, green tea at his stadium office in Tokyo. “They are many.”
His gaze is direct as he ticks them off on his fingers.
“This is the first rugby cup in Asia. The first in a non-traditional rugby country.”
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“We were told by World Rugby that the England World Cup was record-breaking and ground-breaking (‘it broke the ground’ says the translator) and we must do better. But it is difficult for us to have the same style and do it the same way. We have a unique Japanese way to do things.”
“Then we are far away, very far away from England, Europe and South Africa. People must travel far.”
A shortish, squat man, built like a brick outhouse, Shimazu’s expression does not change much. But his eyes light up when I ask if he is optimistic. Sepp Blatter, I tell him, always maintained South Africa’s Football World Cup would be ‘the best ever’ despite many doubters.
“You know Invictus?” he asks. I nod. Everyone in Japan mentions the movie based on John Carlin’s book. The man responsible for the success of Japan’s Rugby World Cup says, “Our cup will be Invictus 2. Yes, Invictus 2!”
Shimazu is flanked by two of his lieutenants for the tournament. They don’t say much, it being the Japanese way to allow only the CEO to speak in a meeting until he invites them to contribute. All three are hugely optimistic, while aware of the many problems.
I am in Japan with two objectives: to see if Japan is ready and keen on rugby, and to see what problems tourists from Africa might face.
Tokyo’s brilliant new international stadium will not be ready on time because of cost overruns, so the final will be played in nearby Yokohama, about a 45-minute drive from Tokyo.
This is a city that’s keen on tourism, keen to host the Springboks, keen to host the media center, as they did for the Football World Cup in Tokyo.
Kozue Nakayama has a fancy title of Director General, Culture and Tourism Bureau, City of Yokahama. She assures me the city is taking the rugby very seriously.
“The final game will be at our Nissan Stadium. We are the city with the best relations with Africa,” she says proudly. “We will have to prepare all our signs in English, for the rugby and the 2020 Olympics the following year. And we have a program to teach all our taxi drivers to speak English by 2019.”
Her English is excellent. Seems ambitious to teach all the taxi drivers, but this is a city that decided all schools in its precinct must study at least one African country.
So what is like for visitors to Japan from Africa?
This is the third-biggest economy in the world, a first-world country where things work, where stuff is expensive, where a language barrier exists and where food is different.
It is also the most polite society on the planet, people are incredibly helpful, trains run on time, and nobody dreams of answering a cellphone on the train as it may disturb others.
I ask young South Africans studying for Master’s degrees, courtesy of the Japanese government, to tell me of their difficulties and experiences.
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“This place has the most amazing food,” says Patrick Leslie, doing a Master’s in Business Economics. “Appointments to companies here are lifelong commitments, by both sides. The whole culture is based on trust. And on ‘how can we help each other?’ which is great to experience.”
“You certainly don’t need a car, just hop in a taxi or bus or train, it will take you home. And it is always safe.”
Randall Reddy, studying a Master’s in Civil Engineering (Mechatronic train dynamic systems) at the University of Tokyo to go with his Master’s in Mechanical Material Sciences, says Japan is all about networking.
“They use resources well, don’t waste them. It is not about fast cars, it is about living well.
And the food is fantastic – I have put on five kilograms. You don’t have to give up red meat, there’s a lot of it. You end up with a great variety of food. Nor does it have to be expensive.”
Leslie chips in: “More restaurants now have English menus, and by the rugby in 2019 and the Olympics in 2020 they will all have.”
So what should I tell people at home?
“Tell them come see the Boks take the World Cup back&#8230; Tokyo no longer makes the top 10 most expensive cities. It’s not cheap, but not too bad. Japan has not had inflation for 20 years. You can find bargains everywhere. And no tipping.”
Sushi in Japan is a very different experience from sushi outside the country, yet the essence is the same. At a restaurant the chef will talk to you about the fish he serves you, one piece at a time. He chooses it, you do not, he puts on wasabi and soy, you do not – only the Americans ask for extra wasabi, one chef tells me conspiratorially. And once that happens, the chef will stop chatting to them.
At a very small (8 seats) restaurant in the earthquake area of Ishinomaki, where the tsunami took away his original restaurant, I ask the chef if he knows about rugby.
“Yes,” he says seriously. Then looks at me, and adds: “We beat you!” with a roar of laughter.
To give you a small taste of the exaggerated Japanese politeness you encounter everywhere, all the time, my guide on the Shinkansen train, traversing Japan at about 300km/h, explains to me in a normal voice in the First Class compartment how to eat eels.
The train manager came next to us, then, to my surprise, knelt on both of his knees in the corridor next to our seats, as if to royalty.
A man of about 45, he apologized profusely, bowed deeply while kneeling until his head almost touched the floor, then lifted his arms and placed one hand over the other in a T-shape. The horizontal top hand then pushed the vertical bottom hand down a little, then a little more.
This was his way of asking us to be a bit quieter, as we may disturb passengers by talking instead of whispering. Profuse apologies for asking us to be quiet. Extraordinary.
In a hotel lobby, if you ask for anything, the person will often run to get it. Run, not walk.
Of course cheap hotels are a bit different. You can get a four-sleeper for about 10,000 yen ($90) in Tokyo, but beds are right up against each other, really four duvets on a floor with a communal shower. But neat, tidy, clean.
So will Africans flock to Japan to support Kenya or South Africa or Namibia? Should they?
The first answer is hopefully they will, and the second a resounding “Yes!”
The 2019 World Cup may be the next Invictus and it may not be. Whatever happens, Japan is ready.

Will African Fans Flood Japan?

For decades, Dan Qeqe Stadium, in the dusty Zwide township of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, was a bedrock of black rugby and home to African Bombers, a former first-tier club. It nurtured a handful of professionals, including Springboks Akona Ndungane and Siya Kolisi. The two were among the few blacks to represent their country and earn big money.
<div id="attachment_5060" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5060" class="size-medium wp-image-5060" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-119660385-300x181.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="181" />PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; JULY 23: Akona Ndungane of Bulls scores during the Absa Currie Cup match between Vodacom Blue Bulls and Toyota Free State Cheetahs at Loftus Versfeld on July 23, 2011 in Pretoria, South Africa (Photo by Lee Warren/ Gallo Images/Getty Images)</div>
These days Dan Qeqe is a rundown shadow of itself. The changing rooms are dilapidated and the pitch is baked hard with patches of red grass. Despite the dire condition, without fail, every winter hundreds of boys tackle each other on this pitch; the hope of becoming a Springbok lives on. As a young lad, I donned my oversized hand-me-down rugby jersey and threw my body into the tussle for the oval ball. We stomped the pitch, barefoot, until we were hardened veterans at 17. In 15 years I covered every inch and cut my knees open every week.
Fifty kilometers north of Dan Qeqe Stadium is the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, a state-of-the-art facility built for the football World Cup in 2010. It is home to Eastern Province Rugby Union (EPRU). In the hot days of summer, just before Christmas, this was the scene of a battle for the soul of grassroots African rugby. It was where managers from over 100 clubs fought their provincial bosses. It was so bad that a scuffle broke out and the security manhandled the angry.
It is part of a struggle to bring hope to black rugby in one of Africa’s hotbeds of the game. The problems run deep at EPRU. For years, there’s been no sponsorship due to lack of accountability; for months players weren’t paid and their reputable coach Carlos Spencer resigned; black players left in droves under claims of financial discrimination and the controversial signing of eight white players, compared to one black player, for the 2016 Super Rugby season.
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Bantwini Matika, the coach of the rugby club Young Collegians and a chairman of a national lobby group Rugby Transformation Coalition, led the fight.
“We have identified these problems for years and followed the due process but without any reward. Now we have seen a collapse of the whole system. Financially, never before has EP Rugby been so in the red. It’s a crisis of unprecedented proportions,” says Matika.
The clubs demanded accountability and a change of management in the provincial structure. At the top of the agenda was the non-payment of EP Kings – the provincial players.
“We are in a serious crisis in the Eastern Cape. This is the home of black rugby. The only reason we got the Super Rugby franchise was solely because Saru (the South African Rugby Union) wanted to create a platform for black players to showcase their talent to the world and for Springbok selection. This has been in the plans of Saru since time immemorial that we need a platform for black players and then the franchise was ideal… Unfortunately the Eastern Cape, which is Border and Eastern Province, has always been unstable because of a lack of resources and lack of sponsors, no solid administrators,” says Matika.
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Since 2014, EPRU has not held a quarterly meeting nor AGM. Matika says, besides the annual grant from Saru, EPRU cannot attract sponsorship because there’s no financial accountability.
“That’s a recipe for disaster. We have talent in abundance (but) our system and administration is not in place. If we don’t have ethical and decisive leadership, if we don’t have proper resources to create an enabling environment for our young people to prosper, we are doomed to fail. Hence you see them running to other unions at a young age. The rot is within the administration,” says Matika.
Mervin Green is Saru’s general manager in strategic performance. He says EPRU made it difficult for Saru to support them in running the business.
“Saru does not interfere with union’s domestic affairs, such as clubs and schools development. We support unions with finances and expertise to ensure they deliver on their own development programs. It is indeed not an ideal situation for everyone what is currently happening at EPRU. However, it is only the clubs that can change the situation,” says Green.
Transformation Rugby Coalition was launched in Soweto, Johannesburg, in 2012. Matika, the former University of Fort Hare captain and coach, was its founding chairman. He laments the lack of transformation in the Springboks.
“After realizing that all the agreements around transformation, whether it is through charters or Saru development plans since 2000, every three years we have a new document that is fruitless. All the rugby activists and (concerned) managers nationwide decided to launch this national structure in 2013 in Soweto. I am glad now we are speaking with one voice and seem to be making a difference and the approach is working for us.”
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A few months before the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England, calls were made not to send the Springboks because they didn’t have enough black players. Political party, Agency for New Agenda, made a court bid to block the team from leaving. They lost the case. This followed Saru’s climb down from the 50% black Springbok representation by 2015, they moved it to 2019. The move did not go down well with Transformation Rugby Coalition.
“The disappointing factor is that we are not getting a hearing. We speak and we write to Saru but they are not interested in what we saying. At the personal and individual capacity, Saru President Oregan Hoskins would respond with promises but there’s nothing happening, nor do we get any recognition from Sascoc (South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee). We would expect that as a lobby group we should have a budget from government but we are currently sustaining ourselves from our own pockets,” says Matika.
The African dream of playing professional rugby reaches far beyond the Eastern Cape. It’s mid-January, a thousand kilometers north of Dan Qeqe stadium. About 40 barefoot boys, aged between nine and 13, are taken through their paces on a rugby field in Braamfischerville, at the Soweto Rugby Club. Their coach is 35-year-old, chubby and outspoken, Zola Ntlokoma.
“We don’t only create rugby players here, we encourage discipline and we want them to pass with good marks. If you don’t go to school, we have no business with you,” Ntlokoma tells me.
Like his counterpart, Matika in Port Elizabeth, Ntlokoma decries the lack of support for grassroots rugby and asserts that he will transform Braamfischerville into a rugby hotbed. Soweto is a football area with three clubs in the Premier Soccer League.
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“Out of 49 townships there’s none with a junior team anymore after [the Golden] Lions Rugby Union took over development and government pumped money to them to champion development. But the money is not filtered down to grassroots where it is needed most. Hence we were forced by those circumstances to form Soweto Rugby Union. It’s not a racial thing, it is just we are tired of complaining. We won’t beg someone to play rugby, we love rugby,” he says.
Ntlokoma, who is also the secretary of Transformation Rugby Coalition, says in the 1990s Soweto Rugby Club dominated the Golden Lions Rugby junior teams with star player Stanley Mlotshwa representing the junior national team in 1998. The last was Malungisa Nkosi, who played for the under-19s in the World Championships in 2006, in Dubai.
Transformation Rugby Coalition researched why black players were not as involved in South African rugby as they should be.
“We discovered that rugby is not run as it is portrayed in the media. There’s a lot that our government doesn’t understand about how rugby runs. We felt that this is a mafia-like organization. It is held to ransom by businesspeople in Stellenbosch who are controlling the executive of Saru, telling them this is the direction they must take. It is that rich white group that decides who is going to be the president of Saru and the coach of the Springboks,” says Ntlokoma.
“Englishmen introduced rugby in South Africa, not the Afrikaners. Now should we give up and say it is the Afrikaners’ sport, I don’t think we will be doing justice to back off. It is a South African sport, that’s why we should continue embracing it. Some of us still hate the Springbok emblem because it reminds us of apartheid… I was a gangster and this sport gave me a second chance in life. Rugby, like any other sport, it changes people’s lives,” he says.
Liz McGregor, a rugby writer based in Cape Town, says Saru has enough money to expedite transformation. She’s sceptical about the target of 50% black representation in 2019.
“If our promising young black players are not being given regular game time at this level now, the next target – 50% of black Springboks by 2019 – also looks like a chimera. I have heard complaints about marginalization from black players for years, at provincial and national level. If the strategic transformation plan were effective, marginalization should be a thing of the past,” she says.
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McGregor raises concerns about Hoskins’ silence about the failure to hit targets in the Springbok teams.
“Grassroots development will always be a key strategic imperative of Saru. The current strategic transformation plan emphasizes the importance of this transformation dimension. We are actively involved in all unions to ensure we provide access to the game and particularly focusing on schools where there was no rugby before,” counters Green.
Green says Saru’s recruitment drive in 2015 saw 80,000 new players from over 300 schools around South Africa.
“The program for participation will be extended to high schools this year and we hope to reach township and rural schools to be in organized leagues. Our focus is also on capacitation programs of thousands of teachers and volunteers as certificated coaches, match officials and administrators,” says Green.
Clearly there are not enough to help more black Africans play the sport.
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Is A White Mafia Trampling  Black Dreams?

When Kirsty Coventry was nine years old, she told her parents, in humble Harare, she would win gold at the Olympics. Twenty three years later, the Zimbabwean is the most successful African Olympian and is preparing for her fifth Olympic Games; and she wants more.
“I have been waking up every morning before sunrise to train since I was six years old,” says the 32-year-old from her base in North Carolina, United States.
Many thought Coventry was finished after London 2012. This year she has been swimming faster than ever and is ripped and ready for Rio.
“I just performed my last big competition before Rio. It went really well. I walked away with five silvers and three bronzes. It’s important to note that at this stage in the game, it’s not what medals I am winning, but what times I am swimming. I got some season best times, so I’m happy with that but I can’t rest now, the field is open to anyone… I have to keep my focus on training.”
Coventry’s calendar is as full as an Olympic swimming pool. In a week she spends 18 hours in the pool and up to four sessions throwing weights in the gym.
“I will also try and add in one or two yoga sessions. Everything we do, in both pool and gym, is focused on quality sets. It’s a passion and when you are truly passionate about something then you will make the necessary sacrifices.”
“I never realized how tough it must have been to swim when I was younger. Our facilities are shocking compared to the rest of the world. But, I can’t complain because it has made me a stronger person&#8230; School was a place where I was teased and made fun of, my swimming club was a safe-haven for me because it was a place I excelled and could gain confidence,” says Coventry.
Coventry took a year off after London to reflect, before committing to Rio. It was hard to regain form.
“I was training with younger athletes who hadn’t taken a year off and, like most athletes, we all compare ourselves to each other and we are highly competitive so having my butt kicked everyday was soul destroying. I had to talk myself through every practice, to remind myself that I was still in the process. Every single day was a bad day. Waking up every morning knowing I was going to lose was terrible,” she says.
All it took was one good day.
“It was like a major reset that helped with the following endless bad days. The reset allowed me to keep pushing through and slowly the good days started appearing more and more until eventually I stopped celebrating the good days and started complaining about the odd bad day,” she says.
There may be merely a handful of Olympians who come back for more at the age of 32. Even fewer had the honor to carry their flag at the opening ceremony.
“Carrying the flag in the opening ceremony is such a privilege because in that moment you are not an athlete but a single representation of your entire nation. Zimbabwe often sends a small Olympic team but we get the loudest applause: we walk out second last, just before the host country, who start walking out as they announce Zimbabwe, and of course the stadium erupts as soon as they see their home country… we’ll take it.”
It’s rarer still to find an athlete with seven Olympic medals under their belt.
“One of the bad sides of winning multiple medals is that it becomes expected of you. There are a lot of people that expect this and it’s sad because suddenly making the Olympics isn’t as big a deal for them, as it should be.”
One of Coventry’s fondest memories was the day she called her parents when she won gold in Athens in 2004.
“My mum couldn’t talk, she just cried. My dad kept saying how proud he was. I don’t think anyone would have made sense of anything that was said between us – it was a beautiful moment that I was happy to share with the two people that had given everything to get me to this point.”
Growing up, Coventry spent a lot of time in the kitchen. The smell of her father’s oxtail and sadza is always a fond reminder of home. Coventry is a proud foodie and cooks hearty meals.
“Fresh produce is delicious – you do not need to smother it with processed junk. My favorite dish to make is pork chops with Aromat and spinach with mashed potato. I have also just recently made my own bread from our own homemade starter (yeast).”
For Coventry it isn’t always about training and eating, it’s also about avoiding. Coventry takes a firm hand when it comes to doping in sport; she has openly criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) for their lack of enforcement of those being caught.
“The International Olympic Committee and Wada have taken recent steps to retest all medal winners from 2008 and 2012 [caught doping] and this does give me some hope. I don’t think it will be a level playing field in Rio but I’m confident that anyone who has doped and continues to dope will be caught. The problem this has for the clean athletes is that they lose out on standing on the podium, watching their flag being raised and possibly earning a far greater sponsorship.”
Some do not escape the long arm of the anti-doping law. In June, tennis star Maria Sharapova tested positive for meldonium, a drug prescribed for heart disease patients to treat inadequate blood flow, which was put on Wada’s list of banned drugs.
“Yet another twist in the epic saga between scandal and sport. While Sharapova’s violation was declared unintentional, she was nonetheless found guilty of negligently contravening the (World Anti-Doping) Code,” says Shweta Mani, Head of Legal and Compliance at CNBC Africa.
As you read this, Coventry will be in the pool for her last minute training for Rio.
“It’s not just my training that has evolved since my first Olympics in 2000 but everything has evolved: my body, my mind, my attitude. I turned 17 at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and I’m entering my fifth Olympics aged 32. I remember being crushed with massive sets during my college years (2001-2005). I would literally be bruised from some of the gym work. It certainly was a military-style boot camp of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, some of the workouts I do now will still make me heave but this comes more from an internal desire to push harder rather than the external motivation from the coach.”
Coventry may have caused a few ripples in her pool in Harare at the age of nine; she is likely to make a bigger splash in Rio.

How Pain, Bullying And A Pork Chop Can Get You To Gold

It is sad how our minds have been conditioned a certain way towards debt. We are told that debt is bad, but there is good debt that can work for an entrepreneur.
There are cases for and against debt. It was the Holy Grail that allowed the automobile, housing, banking and furniture sectors to become successful; it was also the curse that ushered the world into the economic meltdown in 2008.
So, what is good debt and how has it benefited those who know how to play the game?
In real estate, people use debt in innovative ways, like going to the bank to apply for finance for a new house. Once the bank approves, a tenant is brought in and their monthly rental is used to repay the loan. Then they go back to the bank as they still qualify for another property as their income at the time of application still remains the same. This qualifies them for another property, and the model is replicated while tenants service the loan, and their balance sheet increases.
Property developers use this model with a cluster of residential buildings, apartment blocks, and major developments. Developers identify the land, get the correct approvals and compliant paperwork in order, then they hire architects to draw the building plans. Once this is done, the properties are sold off-plan and this money is used to construct the infrastructure.
Another sector where people use debt, with less risk, to become successful is franchising. Firstly, franchises have a proven business model with high probability to succeed. Secondly, banks are more willing to finance new sites or buy an existing branch if the franchise has an established brand. With good management, the debt will be settled.
As entrepreneurs in Africa, we need to be savvy in gearing debt to work for us, and understand the power of leverage.
The recession hit when the US economy was over leveraged in real estate asset class. This is the same asset that many entrepreneurs use as their capital base. They approach banks to take another bond on their house to start a business, or grow it, at the risk of losing their primary residence should things not go according to plan.
Leverage is crucial when you are dealing with financial institutions, particularly banks. However, there is another avenue where leverage is not necessarily a physical asset; there are venture capitalists that fund a company on the perceived current or future value of the company. Others go further by focusing on the team behind the company, credibility and successful track records.
Above all, entrepreneurs need to be careful not to over-leverage themselves. When under-leveraged, the risk is manageable.
Start-up entrepreneurs are famous for bootstrapping their companies, until they produce a viable prototype or penetrate the market. An example of this is Fuseware, a successful African tech company founded by Mike Wronski before he sold it to Ornico.
This presents a challenge between two funding models: debt versus equity financing. Well-structured debt is preferable, provided the company can service the debt in the short term. This is best option for expansion purposes.
Equity is best for start-ups and growth-stage businesses. In this regard, an investor buys a stake in the company and takes on the same risk as you. The downside is that that the entrepreneur loses some control the moment an investor comes into a company.
Sooner or later, it is going to be necessary to approach capital markets to raise money. The fundamental reason for listing on a stock exchange is to raise money. Today, there are other reasons, but raising capital is the main one. A company’s share price is based on perceived value that might be influenced by its income, assets or track record. At the end of the day, the company is worth what the market is prepared to pay for and what investors agree to sell shares for.
There are many times when an entrepreneur’s personal debt overlaps with his company’s debt, predominantly in small to medium sized companies. If able, entrepreneurs should only deal in debt held by the company, rather than their personal accounts.
While debt is not entirely encouraged, any company that is going to be of global significance needs to be familiar with it.

How To Make Debt  Work For You

Economic gurus say Africa needs to industrialize, but Africa seems two jumps into the future and most of the initial public offerings (IPOs) for 2016-2017 will be technology, healthcare, telecoms and even securities exchanges.
Word on the streets of Tanzania’s coastal city is that the IPO of the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange is oversubscribed. The bourse aimed to raise TZS7.5 billion ($3.49 million) in the IPO which closed on June 3 and results were not available as we went to press. It is Africa’s third securities exchange to go through demutualization and self-listing – target date is July 12 for the listing. The stock exchanges in Nigeria and Ghana are among others in the process.
Ben Nice, editor of TMT Finance, says the high-tech rush continues: “Despite global volatility, regional macroeconomic uncertainty, and a rout on commodity prices, recent forecasts are predicting that the next 12 months could see a rebound with IPOs set to reach their highest levels in Africa since 2010, and several TMT (technology, media and telecommunications) companies looking likely to float in 2016 and 2017.”
Africa Internet Group (AIG) is said to be planning an IPO by 2017. It is parent of the Jumia e-commerce brand, present in 11 countries and linked to online and mobile consumer services such as Kaymu (shopping), hellofood (food delivery), Jovago (hotel booking), Vendito (classified ads), Lamudi (real estate), Everjobs (jobs) and Carmudi (vehicles). In April, AIG announced $85.4million equity investment from phone company Orange and in March $341.5 million from Goldman Sachs, MTN, AXA and Rocket Internet.
IHS Towers, based in Lagos and owner of over 23,300 mobile phone towers in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia and Rwanda, is expected to float shares within 12 to 24 months. In December, Chief Executive and Founder, Issam Darwish,  a FORBES AFRICA cover in March 2014, said it would be “the biggest IPO ever in Africa”.
Orange Egypt, rebranded from Mobinil in March, is preparing an IPO for the Egyptian Exchange, with an offering of up to 20% of the shares. It has 33.4 million customers and is Egypt’s second biggest operator after Vodafone. In March, it announced Orange intended to invest $281.5 million into upgrading networks and services.
In May, private equity giant The Abraaj Group exited Tunisian pharmaceutical company Unité de fabrication de médicaments (UNIMED) via an IPO on the Bourse de Tunis, the first this year. The IPO valued UNIMED at $150 million and was 32.6 times over-subscribed, a bourse record. Since 2010, Abraaj has helped the group expand and in 2015 exports to more than 17 countries contributed 35% of sales.
“We recognized the healthcare opportunity in North Africa early on, in a market with a growing middle class, rising healthcare expenditure and expanding life expectancy,” says The Abraaj Group’s Managing Director Adel Goucha.
Shares in Cleopatra Hospital Company started trading on the Egyptian Exchange on June 2 after raising $40.5 million through an IPO which closed on May 30. The group, which owns four hospitals, had offered 40 million shares or 25% of the capital. The public offer was 28.6 times oversubscribed and the institutional offer 6.7 times, after roadshows programmed for Dubai, South Africa, Britain and the United States. It remains majority-owned by Care Healthcare, which includes Abraaj, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Germany’s DEG and France’s Proparco as shareholders. Abraaj, which invested in 2014, said the IPO would fund more growth.
Things were not going so well in Ghana, where Agricultural Development Bank (previously owned 52% by government and 48% by the Bank of Ghana) held an IPO between December and March and raised $115.5 million. Four unnamed investors snapped up 72% of the 75.5 million shares in the new offer but the bank’s board rejected all bids at GHS2 per share and the bank failed to raise the GHS100 million ($26 million) required. It was due to return money to applicants and ask Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to reopen the IPO.
In May, Barclays raised $876 million from selling a 12.2% stake in Barclays Africa Group (103 million shares at R126 each, a 6.5% discount to the market) in an oversubscribed offer with the Public Investment Corporation said to be a big buyer. Barclays is considering selling its remaining 50.1% stake to a strategic investor. Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond and his Atlas Mara group may be a buyer.

Industrialization  Ditched For Tech

His parents could not understand it. How could you pay the bills by playing a guitar? Also, the idea of loose morals associated with musicians didn’t sit well with young Francis Chris Phiri’s parents. This drove young Phiri, known as Lawi, abbreviated from Nzululwazi – custodian of wisdom in the Ngoni language – to work hard on his dream to become a jazz musician, even though he was banned from visiting friends who played musical instruments by his parents, but encouraged to go to church.
“At first church wasn’t fun but when I realized there were musical instruments there, and there was a chance I could practice with the youth group, church became a hideout and a training ground for me,” he says
The church choir helped develop Lawi; he is now an award-winning artist after being named the Best Acoustic Jazz Artist at the Malawian Music Awards and receiving a nomination at the All Africa Music Awards for Best Male Artist in Southern Africa.
Lawi is among the up-and-coming young jazz artists in Southern Africa and getting recognition across the continent.
“Music is a universal language, this makes it quite easy to communicate with lovers of music anywhere,” says Lawi.
“The African continent is big and for your work to be well received by many is a great achievement.  We have many musicians from Africa, and of African origin, with exceptional talent, skills and experience who work very hard to bring about great African music.”
Lawi remembers his first time in a recording studio; he wished he could relive it every day. That’s the day he fell in love with production. He then started saving for his first computer and tiny speakers to teach himself how to produce.
He recalls having a lot of friends interested in music. They created a network where they shared ideas and the music produced from different recording spaces. They called it sessions.
Lawi says he did not take his music to radio stations, but some of them were playing his songs although he does not know how they got the music.
“I thought that the work was not all that great but people enjoyed it. I can say it has been a long journey of hard work and a constant need to perfect my skills,” he says.
The Malawian artist began work on his first album in 2009 and released it in 2013. He worked from home since he had the liberty to experiment as much as he could, plus he could not afford professional studios that charged by the hour. Despite his struggles, Malawi loved the 17-song album.
One of Lawi’s hit songs is The Whistling Song, which had regular airplay and received a lot of feedback on social media. Lawi loves vocal harmonies that accompany the guitar; leading to some comparing him to Youssou N’Dour and Richard Bona.
“I believe it is fair to say my sound is evolving, just as jazz is. Very few musicians play jazz as one would know it from New Orleans in the 1920s, or even in the style of great musicians as recent as Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock,” he says.
Lawi has an extensive portfolio and has performed among great South African artists like Jimmy Dludlu and Ray Phiri. He never thought he would share the stage with these experienced jazz musicians, whom he looked up to as a youngster; this was a dream come true for him. Maybe it’s the first dream of many.

Music Notes Then Bank Notes

On a warm Thursday afternoon, at the Wanderers cricket grounds in Johannesburg, he looks like a high school fan seeking autographs.
Look again; this is Temba Bavuma, a history-maker with a quick eye and a broad bat. The 5.47-foot tall cricketer was the first black South African to score a century in a test match.
Where he made history is part of his story. The century came at one of the most pristine cricket grounds in the world, watched by some of the richest people in Africa at Newlands in Cape Town. Bavuma looked like he was born there; he wasn’t. He was born just 10 kilometers away, in the impoverished Langa township. Two worlds that could hardly be further apart.
On the walls of Langa, the heroes of the streets are celebrated in paintings. Bavuma is up there among the likes of South African music icon Brenda Fassie, sporting heroes Thabo Mngomeni and Thami Tsolekile.
“Inspiring the kids is important because they need to see that there is a brighter future outside the streets of Kwa-Langa,” says Bavuma.
The 26-year-old batsman says in achieving his maiden test century in January, there was no greater feeling than being recognized  by the youth in his township and the young children running up to him, seeking batting advice.
“Life has changed quite significantly since my milestone at Newlands. I spent a couple of days back home at Kwa-Langa and not only the elderly, but the youngsters were really proud of what I had done. The media also was flocking [after] me afterwards,” says Bavuma.
As he speaks, it is clear that the young batsman has his head firmly on his shoulders despite all the media hype.
Bavuma came from a family of sportsmen; inspiration came from his uncles. As a boy he would attend their cricket matches. His sports journalist father also loves the sport.
Bavuma’s talent was already evident in his early years at one of the oldest schools in South Africa, the South African College Junior School. When the family moved to Johannesburg, because of his father’s career, Bavuma would consolidate his cricketing career even further at St David’s Marist Inanda.
Now, he is one of a new generation of sought-after black cricketers that teams are prepared to pay top dollar for.
“Naturally you’ll find that franchises are going to end up paying more for your black African players because they need to field a certain number. It’s like in any market, you have bread and you have milk. Milk might cost more than bread and there’s a reason that milk costs more, maybe there’s a bit more demand for milk you know,” says Bavuma.
“I never actually saw myself competing with a fellow African brother or a black guy, I saw myself competing for six spots with all the other guys batting. That’s helped me to keep me much more motivated and to feed my competitive edge.”
Apart from the financial benefits he gets for being a black African cricketer, Bavuma says he has never experienced any form of racism from his teammates. He says he was welcomed warmly at the Proteas camp and he feels a part of a brotherhood. Bavuma notes, though, that he did receive some chirping on the pitch from English all-rounder Ben Stokes during the test series.
“He walked up to me while I was on the crease and he basically told me that I didn’t belong in the team. I guess chirping is part of the game,” says Bavuma.
The significant impact Bavuma’s 102 not out could have on children, especially to the majority of South Africa’s population was not lost on the young man who had grown up in the township.
“When I made my debut, I came to be a bit more aware of the significance behind it. It’s not just me making my debut for South Africa but it’s being a role model and inspiration for other kids, black African kids in particular. So this milestone solidifies this achievement,” says Bavuma.
Powerful words from a small man, with a big heart, born and bred in Langa.

Langa’s Little Big Man

Cape Town’s townships were once referred to as “apartheid’s dumping ground”. Today, 22 years into democracy, the stories usually told of these spaces speak of poverty, rampant crime and socioeconomic marginalization.
But Tony Elvin, the charismatic founder of Ikhaya Le Langa, has a very different view. “When I first discovered Langa, not only was it not what I was told in terms of supposedly being a sad and fearful place,” he says, “It was the place where I found a community still intact. There’s an energy and a spirit that is in Langa, and if we can capture that, it’s like gold.”
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Seated in the café at his headquarters in a repurposed Langa primary school, Elvin uses a detailed and dog-eared map of Cape Town to introduce what his NGO is trying to achieve in Cape Town’s oldest black township.
What the map reveals is surprising and powerful: Langa does not sit on the isolated peripheries of the metropolis where common lore has long positioned it, but right at its pulsing heart.
As a black Londoner living in Langa, Elvin admits that he’s used to surprising people. Before he moved here permanently in 2010, the long-neglected Langa community’s interaction with the rest of the world had been limited to occasional groups of white tourists passing through on a quick “poverty safari”, as Tony disdainfully calls the archetypal township tour, before heading back to their cushy city hotels.
Through the ongoing development of the so-called Langa Quarter, Elvin hopes to emphatically change that trend.
“The aim is to create an aspirational cool place, not just for tourists, to create a new place in Cape Town where Capetonians can also go, not only for a history lesson, but to listen to some great jazz, see some great art, chill out and have a great time. I want the Langa Quarter to be to Cape Town what the French Quarter is to New Orleans,” says Elvin.
The Langa Quarter is the pilot model of a concept that Elvin has dubbed the “Social Enterprise Precinct”. The idea, he says, is to overlay the social enterprise principles of “people, planet and profit” onto particular neighborhoods, and to thereby create “viable, sustainable spaces where investment will flourish, and the poverty will then take care of itself.”
Elvin has considerable experience doing this in Cape Town, having first come here as a social enterprise consultant for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2004. Elvin soon fell in love with the city and went on to set up his own social enterprise consultancy firm in the center of Cape Town, where he came into contact with a number of young township-based social entrepreneurs.
“I became aware that there was a lot more I wanted to do in Cape Town, and particularly in the townships,” says Elvin.
He concedes that he still “wasn’t quite sure” what he was setting out to achieve when he moved from his luxurious Hout Bay residence into the township to start Ikhaya Le Langa.
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“Even today, I sometimes describe it all as being at sea, in the middle of a storm, in a boat that I’m still building, without knowing what shape it will take, and I’m not sure what direction I’m headed in either. It’s still new, this approach.”
But Elvin can already boast a number of successes, including the Langa Quarter Homestay Hotel, where visitors are fed and accommodated in the home of a Langa resident. Since its inception a little over a year ago, this initiative has contributed more than R100,000 (roughly $6,400) to the 15 households currently involved – a considerable amount of money in an area where the majority earn less than R4,000 (roughly $250) a month.
Then there’s the annual, and increasingly well-attended, Uplifting Langa Through Reachable Art (ULTRA) street art event, which this year drew talented artists from across the Langa community and far beyond; world-renowned French street artist Jace stayed in Langa for a week as the event’s artist in residence.
Other fledgling ventures – including a media, graphics and advertising studio, an online shop for local artisans and designers, and a new restaurant – have drawn support from multinational companies, including Amazon and Ikea.
But take a walk with Elvin through the intricate crisscrossing streets of the quarter and it’s evident that he’s not resting on his laurels. He talks incessantly, throwing out countless ideas and plans for improving everything that he passes.
The effusive greetings he receives from the local residents along the way pay testament to the time he has invested in gaining their trust, and ensuring that they will be a central part of every step of this process.
“Above all, I’m focused on how the wonderful, cool transformation of Langa can positively influence the community and what is the opportunity to drive change. Langa deserves to be shown some love.”
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It’s also clear that Elvin feels more than just a philanthropic affinity for Langa.
“I love living in Langa. I’ve got friends here, I love the noise of Langa, I like the people that you walk around and see every day – it’s really very charming. After six years, Langa’s my home.”
With so much still in the pipeline, Elvin is not looking to uproot himself anytime soon.
“The Langa Quarter is far from a finished product, but we are at a stage where we can invite people in and, critically, they can stay,” he says. “So that’s a stake in the ground and we will grow from that, and more and more people will benefit from that. Essentially what we’ve done already is create hope.”

The Londoner Capturing African Spirit And Spinning It Into Gold

It is a warm winter’s day in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nkosana Mazibisa is a long way from home but he is eager to make his mark; here and abroad.
Mazibisa was born in the heart of what used to be Zimbabwe’s industrial town, Bulawayo, in 1988. They call it KoNtuthu Ziyathunqa, the place that exudes smoke, in isiNdebele, because of its industry. The harsh economic conditions in Zimbabwe took the smoke from the air.
“There is so much potential in my country. When I was young, I remember the town was full of smoke from industries making many homemade products. Many of these industries have closed down and it is up to us to revive them and create jobs,” says Mazibisa.
Mazibisa wants to be the Bulawayo reviver. The idea of fixing the city dawned on him in his high school debate team in Bulawayo.
“The country was collapsing and we had a debate at school about these issues and how to solve them.”
When it was over, everyone went home and continued with their lives, but not Mazibisa. He started thinking about the role he could play. He graduated and worked hard but that debate haunted him. The smell from Bulawayo factories he was accustomed to growing up was a distant memory.  Home-grown brands he had loved were off the shelves and replaced by international and South African brands, so he swapped his well-paid job for entrepreneurship.
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“My family was shocked. They didn’t understand what I was doing because there are no jobs in Zimbabwe and I here I was resigning. That didn’t scare me. I knew that I had to do my bit to make a difference. That’s why I decided to start a business to solve the unemployment problems we have and revive our industries,” says Mazibisa.
He founded a food retail brand, Swaad “The Taste of India” and Mazibisa Inc., a brand strategy consultancy firm in Bulawayo Zimbabwe.
“I could have gone to Harare but we need to resuscitate Bulawayo and I am playing my role in its revival. Most countries have a brand that represents their nationality. In Zimbabwe we used to have such brands like Willards but now there is nothing. My country at one point was the breadbasket of Africa. Seeing all the big brands we had disappear from the shelves gave me a challenge. I realized Zimbabwe is in a way an extension of South Africa. We have South African shops and brands now, but very few of our own, those brands don’t necessarily resonate with Zimbabwean consumers,” he says.
Swaad makes snacks such as biscuits, potato crisps and dried fruits in a small factory in Bulawayo.
“I want to one day see the smoke from factories cover the blue sky like I used to when I was child. It would mean the country is healing and we are making our own products again instead of importing.”
Mazibisa’s ambitions to make a difference are far and near. He chairs Mawaba School Development Committee (SDC) in Bulawayo as the youngest SDC chair in Zimbabwe’s history. He built a state-of-the-art computer science laboratory which has been adopted for all city council and government schools. He is currently working on a $2-million double-storey lecture theater block and multi-purpose swimming pool project which is due before end of 2017. He is also one of FORBES AFRICA’s 30 under 30s for 2016 and a Mandela Washington Fellow.
These accolades were born of struggle.
“When I decided to start a business, I applied for the government youth fund twice but I didn’t get it. I saw this failure as a stepping stone and not a stumbling block,” he says.
With Zimbabwe’s harsh economic turmoil, dreams are often bleak. He used the little savings from his job to start a brand strategy consulting firm to raise funds for Swaad.
“Lines of credit are slim but the fact that we have a crisis means we have an opportunity to create a new order. Crisis means opportunities for entrepreneurs to rise and create opportunities. Sometimes it feels like I am fighting a losing battle but I always remind myself of the bigger picture. This is my purpose and I am ready to see it through. And this is more than about making money but also creating national pride and valuing local brands, ” says Mazibisa.
He says each of their products have a message from the CEO to ensure the clients feel valued.
“People also fill in their names and birthday details at the till when they buy our products. On their birthday, I send them birthday wishes. Buying local is more than just the brand but a story of national pride and I am hopeful that Zimbabwe will rise again.”
In Mazibisa’s eyes, where there is smoke there is pride.

The Bulawayo Reviver

Tshepo Mohlala remembers being forced to wear a green blazer at church because his grandmother said so. He says she had style; she was also the pastor and still is. Clothes were always a big part of his life, now they’re his fortune.
Mohlala grew up in a small house in Tsakane, 50 kilometers east of Johannesburg, living with mostly women at their grandparent’s house. This was because of his parent’s sudden divorce and many hard years. It was here that his love for fashion unfolded.
He moved from home to home because his mother kept changing jobs as a domestic worker. At the one house they lived in a backroom behind the home.
“We stayed there for two years and it was terrible, we weren’t allowed to do certain things,” Mohlala says.
“We had to move back to Tsakane, our granny’s house. The great thing is that we moved back with family.”
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Mohlala and his family didn’t have it easy. When they couldn’t afford clothes, church members would bring them some.
“It felt good and often I was often first to choose,” laughs Mohlala.
Soon after, Mohlala went to Brakpan High School where he completed his matric, things were easier than before. His mother got a better job in Centurion, around 20 kilometers south of Pretoria.
“I was forced to join the church choir!”
“Choir was exciting. I looked forward to it because my friends and I would talk about our dreams. We were all from the same background; small houses, grannies, church and having no fathers,” says Mohlala.
Clothes were never far away. At choir, Mohlala met the creator of Skinny Sbu Socks, Sibusiso Ngwenya, and social media strategist, Mpumelelo Jules Kumalo.
They were all passionate about fashion. They sold second hand suits at church to make extra money. They bought them for R250 (around $16) and sold for a lot more.
Their dream was to arrive in Johannesburg, 28 kilometers away, and become entrepreneurs, meet celebrities, and make a lot of money, he says.
In 2010, Mohlala went to Johannesburg to study cinematography, but clothes and fashion were always on his mind.
“I remember walking with my girlfriend from choir to buy food and we were wearing skinny jeans. The guys gambling on the street corner laughed at me saying I’m gay. I was fashion forward,” he says.
Inspiration came from strange places. Thugs would come to Mohlala’s grandmother to confess their sins; young Mohlala was impressed by the criminals’ dress sense. His grandmother, the pastor, approved their elegance, if not their deeds, and advised Mohlala to look as stylish.
“Not only criminals came, even the good guys. My gran just wanted me to be a gent and look good,” he says.
But Johannesburg was not paved with gold as they had thought. It was grimy and hard work.
Mohlala mingled at fashion events. He met a lady at South Africa Fashion Week and told her he wanted to be a stylist. He was told to study fashion. And he did in 2011.
Mohlala had to drop out a year later because he couldn’t afford tuition fees. He told himself he was not going back to the streets of Tsakane. He moved to a one-bedroom flat in Brixton, Johannesburg, with his friend from church, Ngwenya. He made money through promotions, also getting rejected by retail stores. He recalls this as his worst and hungriest year.
Then came another fashion week where he met Felipe Mazibuko, the South African stylist and fashion guru. Mazibuko liked his style and they exchanged numbers.
They met over lunch the next week and Mohlala was introduced to fashion veteran Olebogeng Ledimo, the founder of House of Ole, who had an event coming up.
“We drove around that day with Ole’s Jeep in Braamfontein and I couldn’t believe I was meeting so many people I see on television,” he says, still in disbelief.
He worked with Ledimo and Mazibuko on a campaign for three weeks, he also made friends and potential business partners. Mohlala never looked back.
Months later, AfrikanSwiss was created with two former co-workers from the 2012 South Africa Fashion Week. Their idea was to create the first premium genuine-denim in South Africa. The trio gave the jean industry in Johannesburg a facelift. Their focus was menswear.
The brand was growing immensely and they were showcasing at international events in 2013, dressing international R&amp;B group 112 and producer P. Diddy on their tour. They were also involved in photoshoots with the Dutch shoe brand, Palladium.
“We were going to be part of all that vibe,” he says.
In 2014, AfrikanSwiss opened a shop in the heart of Johannesburg and continued budding. As things were blossoming, it turned sour, says Mohlala.
“Emotions and business clashed, the vision of the business clashed too. We were not on the same page anymore.”
Mohlala stepped down and decided to go solo. He continued making jeans and promised not to compete with AfrikanSwiss.
Mohlala took this time to do market research and study the denim industry by searching for loopholes to take advantage of. He found an opportunity, took the little money he had saved and used it to produce his first range of jeans. He named his jeans, Tshepo The Jean Maker.
The jeans are cut to fit the target market’s lifestyle, which can be worn formally or casually. The design details are seen inside and out.
“Our fabric is sourced locally. My jeans are raw unwashed and are made to take the shape of the wearer,” he says.
Most of Mohlala’s sales are made through social media and he has sold as far as Atlanta in the United States.
The jean maker is fast growing and slowly transforming the denim industry. He was a choirboy inspired by thug attire; he’s now a young man exporting jeans to the world.

The Choirboy Inspired  By Criminals

It started 20 years ago, when farmers from a small seaside town in Africa took a sea snail slithering through the swaying kelp forests under the ocean and tried to farm it inland. They grew this small-town idea into a thriving $35.3-million aquaculture business. This is the story of abalone in Africa, reared on the shores of Hermanus, 120 kilometers southeast of Cape Town, which ends up on dinner plates in Hong Kong.
“We are lucky our species has got a very good taste, a very good texture. Our processing techniques are of a very high standard and we are able to compete with the best.”
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So says Werner Piek, Executive Marketing Manager of Abagold, a man who grew up eating abalone long before it was farmed in Africa.
“I knew abalone since I was very small. We had a holiday house in Franskraal, just past Gansbaai. In those days there were no wetsuits, or flippers or anything like that. You had your pair of old tekkies (trainers), goggles and a screwdriver and you would go diving. In those days we were allowed to take five abalone per day. Nice big ones. On Saturdays we would go diving and bring back the abalone and cook it in a poitjie [slow cooked stew]. That was our weekend.”
In years of jet-setting between Hong Kong and South Africa, the 50-year-old Piek has adjusted his palate. Nowadays the man who started working as a factory manager in 2006, when abalone began to boom, prefers dried abalone, cooked with Asian flair.
“That’s a South African style of doing [abalone]. Asians have a very different way of eating it. It has to be whole abalone. They don’t like it minced. It’s cooked with a Chinese-style sauce, served with a piece of broccoli. They are looking for the toughness and the chewiness. South Africans want seafood with garlic butter.”
Like a good wine, abalone is as a varied as the grape. With over 100 species, of which 15 are commercial, abalone has different characteristics.
“What is the price of red wine? It depends, you have the pairing; where it comes from; what the taste and texture was; and the method it was made. From a world perspective French wine is considered the best, with abalone – its Japanese. It has the longest history of export to our main market. South Africa has been in the business for 50 years, but we have only been farming abalone for the last 15 to 20 years,” says Piek.
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Abalone is eaten during Chinese New Year or during the Dragon Boat Festival. It is a high-end product, used as a symbol of wealth. It isn’t, despite what people believe, an aphrodisiac.
“It is a famous gift is to give your potential mother-in-law, as a gift on Mother’s Day, to show respect. So it’s definitely not an aphrodisiac, no one wants to give their mother-in-law that kind of a present,” says Piek.
There is plenty of room to grow. The South African abalone farms account for 1% of the 120,000 tons of abalone produced in the world.
“You can’t go to Hong Kong and miss it. The branding is everywhere, on taxis, on billboards and on buildings. With all my experience I prefer the very high-end dried abalone. It produces all the flavor of the abalone. It’s not easy to prepare, it takes three to four days to cook it,” says Piek.
From the 1950s, the abalone industry went global and Hermanus was right in there; all because of canning technology making export into Asia easier.
At the time, South African commercial divers were hauling 2,000 tons per year from the seabed. Authorities realized this wasn’t going to last and introduced something called total allowable catches (TAC), restricting catches to 600 tons by 1970.
“1994 was at that stage that poaching started to pick up in South Africa. The policing around the coast became a lot more lax. People felt more freedom and felt they could take out of the sea, whereas before the police would do horrible things to them if they were caught. Also around that period, South Africa became a lot more international and the Chinese who came saw that there was abalone.”
The doors to China were open and the small-time abalone pickers tried their hands at farming. The latest data released in the Aquaculture Yearbook 2014, by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, showed businesses in the seas were on the rise. In 2013, the value of the aquaculture sector, based on sales of products, grew by 38.1% to $46.5 million. Abalone accounted for $35.3 million.
A drop in the ocean when compared with South Africa’s gross value of agricultural production which was almost $12.5 billion in 2013.
Gavin Johnston, head of Aquaculture Consulting and Management Services, who has built aquafarms over the last 20 years, says that abalone is one of Africa’s great success stories.
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“Abalone is a niche within a niche. It’s the high-end of society that wants our species. There is lots of different species. The market is complex. The price can fluctuate by as much as 200 percent depending on how it was dried and its slight color differences. Guys are paying $400 a kilogram.”
“It’s an interesting market, with a capacity of 80,000 tons a year. [South Africa is] currently producing 1,200 tons. We are a small fry that supplies a small portion, but it’s got a high value on the market. It’s going to be interesting to see when we there are more farms on the market,” says Johnston.
The small crustacean in the kelp forest is going to become an even bigger money maker as the years go on. Piek expects that by 2020 South Africa will produce 3,000 tons a year. It seems the dinner plates of Hong Kong can’t get enough.

The Sea Snail Business That’s Worth  $35 Million

It’s almost 36 years since John Lennon died from an assassin’s bullet outside his home, The Dakota, in Manhattan, New York. Yet they still flock to mourn the Beatles guitarist, from Liverpool, at his memorial site in Central Park.
John Lennon, Bullet, Manhattan, New York, Memorial, Mark David Chapman, July 2016
It’s chilling to think how killer, Mark David Chapman, posed for a photo with Lennon, hours before he pulled the trigger. Chapman, who was a Lennon fan, was imprisoned for life and denied parole many times.
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Across the road from where Lennon was gunned down, his widow Yoko Ono built a 2.5-acre teardrop-shaped living memorial in Central Park. Their Dakota apartment overlooked the park where the couple often walked.
On Lennon’s birthday, October 9, 1985, Ono and thousands fans unveiled the memorial site and renamed it Strawberry Fields; the name of a song he wrote for the Beatles.
As a Lennon fan from Africa, I vowed to set my foot there before returning to the motherland in September. In my second month in New York, weekends passed without visiting the park. I had been promised tours of the Big Apple since I arrived but I stay on the other side of the Hudson River in Jersey City. All my colleagues are on other side in New York City and Manhattan.
At 6PM on a Saturday in May, I was caught up in the moment of despair as it seemed another weekend was going to waste, a text message beeped. It was Karsten Strauss, a colleague.
“Hi Thobile, (do you) still have time to hang out tomorrow? But first a question: are you a fan of John Lennon?”
“Yeah man, I am John Lennon groupie,” I replied.
Apparently Manhattan knows not Sunday rest and never sleeps. I took a train to Manhattan and followed instructions sent to my phone. Strauss was there waiting for me. We walked down a few miles and passed two guards in navy suits and matching marine caps at the gate of the Dakota apartment.
“Where did it happen, officer?” Strauss queried as we passed.
One guard, leaning on a sign that read ‘Authorized Persons Only Beyond This Point’, lowered his head and hit the ground with shiny black shoes. “Right here,” he replied.
As we entered the memorial, the walkway led to a small crowd taking photographs around the black and white mosaic circle with one word on it:  “Imagine”. The mosaic was a gift from the city of Naples, Italy.
Nearby, a busker strummed his guitar, very hard, playing a song I didn’t recognize; opposite him a grey-haired man in a stall sold souvenirs bearing Lennon quotes.
The excitement was overwhelming; I stepped to the mosaic and smiled to the camera with my African swagger. Unbeknown to me I had jumped the queue, I was embarrassed but I offered my sincere apology for the mishap. That’s not how I was raised. In the spirit of Lennon, peace was made.
Something about this memorial stirred thoughts of Africa. In 2007, South Africa mourned the death of a musician cut off in his prime. Reggae musician Lucky Dube was shot dead in front of his children as he dropped them off at a relative’s house in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. The man of sober habits – a non-smoker – died at the hands of carjackers.
Dube, born on a farm in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, was drawn to music after stumbling on instruments in a school cupboard. He released his first album in 1982; two years after Lennon died. He died 27 years after Lennon, and not much older, aged 43, with 21 albums and a record deal with Motown. Like Lennon, Dube carried a torch for peace.
The legacy of Lennon will be celebrated for many more decades in his adopted land. Dube, the man who stuck by his people and preached peace to the end, died with his good name and little else to remember him by other than his songs. There is no park, nor memorial, nor studio, to commemorate a man who meant as much to many Africans as Lennon ever did. Imagine.

Imagine?

They were led by cavalier gentlemen who believed they could overthrow an African government with 600 men, eight Maxim machine guns and three light artillery pieces. It was a band of brigands, aristocrats, adventurers and opportunists who carried out the so-called Jameson Raid on Johannesburg in December 1895 – one of the greatest botched coups in African history. On July 28, it will be 120 years since their trial ended in London in 1896 where the raiders got a slap on the wrist for trying to jump a country – their leader, Leander Starr Jameson, was one of many who walked free from prison five months later.
FORBES AFRICA looks at what would have been made of the Jameson Raid in the 21st century. For a start, it would have been the cellphone and not the gun as the lethal weapon, according to strategists.
“In some aspects war has never changed. For a start, it’s getting the right amount of men into the right position. Today your first prize would have to be an attack on a digital level,” says Colin Webster, Secretary General of Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA).
By day, Webster is a tax consultant living in Germiston, in the east of Johannesburg. On weekends, he is a three-time World Champion of Ancients Warfare of the International Wargames Federation.
<div id="attachment_5014" style="width: 218px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5014" class="size-medium wp-image-5014" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-463894213-208x300.jpg" alt="" width="208" height="300" />Leander Starr Jameson, Scottish-born South African politician, </div>
“What you would want to do is, like in the Jameson Raid, rely on the chaotic state of affairs between different nationalities. To attack a country you need to create the chaos. For example, in World War Two, the Germans created huge printing presses to create counterfeit currency. The idea was to devalue the British pound.”
“With technology it’s become so much more complicated. You would have to disable the entire country’s electronic infrastructure. A country sitting without its internet, TV and radio, makes it difficult to get information out to different regiments. It’s not impossible because all you need is a couple of electromagnetic pulses (a bomb that will fry your electronics) in the right places.”
Webster’s great grandfather was a commandant at Pilgrim’s Rest, in Limpopo after the South African War.
“I prefer the historical gaming, to computer games like Age of Empires, because it is all interactive with people. There are three different types of wargames that you will play. One is competitive. Two is recreating a battle from history. The third is simulating a battle.”
“Warfare today has become a very different kettle of fish. A lot of it is computerized. Your whole way of conducting a battle is different from the less technological society during the Jameson Raid. You have to realize the ranges of weaponry today far outrange anything that’s previously handled. These days you are able to pinpoint where you are going to fire your shells.”
Another strategist is John Smith, not his real name, an investment analyst living in Johannesburg and a World War Two re-enactor hobbyist since 2012.
“Your main goal is to consolidate your power as quickly as possible. You want to seize the initiative – always attack, always strike first, always keep your opponent reacting instead of planning – and you want to cover as much ground as quickly as possible.”
Winning over the masses, controlling utilities such as water and electricity, and controlling the media are all part and parcel of success, says Smith.
“In the modern world, your most important technology is the media. Mobile phones, social media sites – you must control them. War in the 21st century is not about who has the smartest tank or the lightest assault rifle – Iraqi IEDs and Afghan tank traps and Syrian barrel bombs have proven that. Your most important tech is that which allows you to control the media – and to sell your ideology. Take internet servers offline, hack into television broadcasters, breach government websites or take them offline through DDOS attacks &#8211; that is the tech that will count. Whether your protestors are armed with AK47s or the latest German assault rifles means little when you are losing the media war.”
There was little media back in 1895 when doctor and magistrate-turned-soldier adventurer, Jameson, set off from the small town of Pitsane, just across the now Botswana border on December 29, 1895. The idea was to overthrow the gold-rich Transvaal run by Paul Kruger, the President of the South African Republic (SAR). Jameson banked on the raid triggering an uprising of so-called Uitlanders, foreigners, working in the mines in Johannesburg.
The mainly British Uitlanders outnumbered the Afrikaners two to one, paid taxes and had no vote. The plan was for them to seize the armory in Pretoria as Jameson rode in to Johannesburg.
It all fell apart when Transvaal troops stopped the raid dead in its tracks in Doornkop, 26 kilometers west of Johannesburg. The Transvaal soldiers had tracked the raiders from the minute they crossed the border. Jameson’s men believed, mistakenly, they were safe because they had cut telegraph wires to Pretoria; all they had cut was a fence.
Jameson suffered the ignominy of borrowing a white apron from an old woman as a makeshift flag of truce. The prisoners were sent to Pretoria and then to London for trial, after diplomatic horse trading.
“The Jameson Raid could have worked if it had successfully divided society. The Jameson Raiders were backing on the Uitlanders to support them against the Transvaal government. They were relying on Uitlanders, who were mainly British, however the [Uitlanders] had no intention of supporting the Jameson Raiders as they were quite happy with the SAR,” says Webster.
These days, an attack on a government would be a different story.
“Any battle relies on surprise. It would be extremely difficult today to do a raid on South Africa because of South Africa’s infrastructure&#8230; South Africa has one of the best armies in Africa, you would have to have the backing of a foreign government. That’s not going to happen today. From that point of view South Africa is very safe and secure,” says Webster.
“There are a number of international arms dealing laws and treaties in place, making it difficult for the nefarious plotter to get his hands on weaponry in general. This leaves the darker avenues. Seize existing stockpiles of weaponry from the current government, like the Arab Spring in Libya or Syria, or on the black market. This is usually an expensive and low-quantity proposition, and is better suited for getting niche items like a shoulder-launched anti-air missile for shooting down a civilian airliner than arming large numbers of insurrectionists at a time,” says Smith.
The full force in Jameson’s repercussions were felt in South Africa. Its backer, Cecil John Rhodes, mining magnate and Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, was forced to step down. His British South Africa Company paid £1 million in compensation. Other conspirators were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death; this was commuted to 15 years.
As for Jameson himself, he was sentenced to 15 months and released after five. Eight years later, in 1904, Jameson went on to become the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Not a bad outcome for a gentleman convicted of treason who botched a raid to remove an African government. Jameson was buried on a high rock outcrop in the Matobo Hills, near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, a few hundred meters from the right hand of Rhodes. What stories they could tell.

Tag: July 2016

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Imagine?

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